Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Last October I mentioned that Ancestry.com was scanning the Web for biographical information. Kimberly Powell reports that the company is caching the content it finds behind its subscription firewall.

Ancestry.com is serving up copies of copyrighted work and, to make matters worse, selling this as one of their subscription databases. Because the pages are cached, they are also depriving the Web site and/or content owner of traffic and potential income.

In addition to the concerns Kimberly voices, I wonder if Ancestry.com allows webmasters to forbid caching, as Google does. Permitting website owners to easily opt out is both legally and morally advisable.